Then Several More
by manitounell
Summary: Missing Scene 4.19, One Small Step


Missing scene:

Zane stopped and looked back when he heard Henry call his name.

"Yeah?"

"A word?" With a tilt of his head, Henry gestured to his small office just off of the main hanger bay.

Zane was heading for his primary lab in quest of tools and parts; the repair on the main FTL control board was going to be a bitch of a project. Whatever-the-hell was melting everything was doing a really thorough job.

But he forced a smile, shoved his hands in his pockets and headed towards Henry. Well-honed instincts informing in him in no uncertain terms that he was about to be majorly reamed for something.

"Sure," he managed to say, through only barely-clenched teeth.

The timing was obviously terrible, but Henry knew that too, and he had decided whatever it was too important to postpone. Which meant this scene was going to suck in every possible way.

As Zane stepped through the doorway, he realized the office wasn't empty.

Grace Monroe was already there, seated in the only extra chair.

Zane left his hands in his pockets, but offered her a respectful nod. A compromise between acknowledging her new position and not conceding anything until he knew what he was in for. "Captain."

"You can call me Grace for this," she said. She was smiling, but the hint of command steel was unmistakable.

Zane's heart sank. In his sadly quite-extensive experience, it was always a bad sign when they started off on the informal, 'we're just all friends here,' line of bullshit.

Henry had closed the door and now took his own chair.

Leaving Zane standing. Star-chamber style. Wasn't that special.

Zane pulled his hands from his front pockets and clasped them loosely behind his back. Not quite the soldiers 'parade rest,' but definitely a more formal pose. Adopted to let them know the veneer of friendship did not fool him. "Okay. Grace. What's going on?"

Her smile faded to a 'sympathetic yet firm' expression. Another gambit he recognized all too well. And prepared him not at all for what she actually said.

"You need to stop badgering Jo."

"Excuse me?" He was sure he couldn't possibly have heard what he just heard.

They were in the middle of a fucking crisis. The main FTL was off line. They still didn't know why shit was melting all over town. Their spare FTL had just blown up and Andy was trapped on Titan and running out of time.

Henry and Grace chose this moment out of all others to interfere in his personal life? What the ever fucking fuck?

Henry glanced at his wife with a raised brow. Then he shrugged and looked back at Zane. "The tension between you and Jo has become a problem. It's disturbing members of the Astreaus crew and the mission control team. Even today, in the midst of both celebration and crisis, you're snapping at her or about her. Everyone else is on edge because of it, keeping half an eye out for your inevitable clashes when they should be focusing a hundred percent on the task at hand."

Zane opened and closed his mouth a few times, shock wiping his brain clean.

Finally, a few semi-coherent, and completely outraged, words floated up. "It wasn't – it isn't! – any of their damn business!" he snarled.

Grace shook her head, her disapproval more apparent. "Your public stomping around, sulking, veiled and not-so-veiled insults have made it everyone's business, Zane."

He wanted so, so badly to defend himself. Explain that he had damn good reasons to be angry with her. Wasting his time and attention with her frivolous impulses. Quitting on him rather than seeing things through to the end. Playing at science when it was everything that mattered for others. Abandoning him when … He caught himself before he went any further, uncomfortably aware that this was exactly what Grace was talking about.

And that Fargo had blabbed.

Or, no. Zane reorganized the data. Drew the obvious conclusion. Fargo had been delegated to say something, hadn't he? And Zane had brushed him off, crabbing again about Jo in the process. Which is why he was now facing the big guns. Great. Very smooth move, asshat.

He decided prudence dictated a silent glare.

After letting the silence drag on long enough to be uncomfortable, Henry said, "Maintaining a romantic relationship when one or both of you occupy prominent positions at GD is difficult under the best of circumstances. Yours are uniquely challenging. We should have spoken with you both long before today about the particular hurdles the two of you face. Things might be better now if we had. I'm sorry."

Zane leapt on this concession. Attack was always better than defense. "So why didn't you?"

Henry and Grace exchanged a look, and then Henry said, "You know why."

Right. Fucking time travel. Zane curled his lip, just to make sure they knew how stupid and offensive he found all of this. "Why would that affect the 'relationship talk'?"

"It shouldn't have." Henry sighed grimly and shook his head. "But, it was very hard on Jo. Losing everything she'd had with you so abruptly. Once the two of you did begin to explore a personal connection – Grace reminded us how much pressure you had to already be feeling, knowing you'd fallen in love with her once before. That any move on our part to address the professional implications of your burgeoning relationship would only intensify that."

"Why are there any professional implications at all?" Zane demanded.

"Think, Zane!" Grace exclaimed. "Jo is Chief of Security! She's in and out of every lab, greets every researcher by name. Responds to every accident. Personally clears every hire, transfer and lab assistant. She can make or break a career! Before that, she was Jack's deputy. And Cobb's before that. Everyone in Eureka knows Jo! _Anyone_ Jo established a personal relationship with would be a focus of attention and gossip. Given that it's you? With your record and your reputation? Of course people were concerned!"

Zane scowled. Concerned about their own asses, she meant. "Once she hooked up with me – resident felon – her professional judgment was called into question," he said.

As was, undoubtedly, her personal judgment. Fortunately, they weren't talking about that.

Or his. He didn't have, or hadn't had, any reputation for either personal or professional judgment worthy of the name. Which, of course, was why everyone was so 'concerned.'

"Yes. It was." Henry agreed, his natural gravitas reaching epic proportions as he added, "In nearly all quarters."

It was amazing how Henry could draw pictures with just the tone of his voice. 'Quarters' meant the DOD. Congressional oversight. Mansfield. Wen. And most of GD. Hell, most of Eureka. Really, everyone other than the eight or ten people who were in on the time travel story. All of them wondering what in the fuck had gone so wrong with Lupo, once so upstanding that Zane himself had thought that the ramrod up her exceptionally fine ass was permanently grafted in, that she'd hook up with him. Thief. Player. Felon. General all-round havoc-maker.

An emotion Zane was not much acquainted with welled up out of his gut, making him feel hot and weak at the same time. Maybe even a bit dizzy. It took him a second to even name it for what it was. And it came as something of a shock when he did.

Guilt. This was _guilt_. He felt guilty. A whole tangled mess of guilt. For putting Jo's professional reputation at risk. For not thinking about Jo's reputation at all. For not pulling his head out of his own ass to protect her however he could when it would have mattered. When he might have made a difference. Suddenly, the phrase 'sick with guilt,' stopped being a metaphor. He actually, for real, felt faintly nauseous.

"I…," he paused to lick his lips, "I didn't really think about that."

"They don't remember," Grace added, more gently this time, "but I do, and you should too. How public your uglier run-ins with Chief Lupo were. Jo's support gave you a chance to start over, show what you could do. But now, when you're so openly angry with her, people are wondering just how far you're going to backslide. How long she'll let it go on."

He did remember.

But the Jo she had been then and the Jo she was now were so radically different, at least with regard to him, that it might as well have been another timeline for him too. By the time he and Jo had started hooking up, that past had faded into near irrelevance as far as he was concerned.

An error. In retrospect. He'd been so focused on her and him and their fucking _feelings_, he hadn't thought at all about how she had risked her professional standing, shit, even her damn job itself, in reaching out to him. In protecting him. In, literally, climbing into bed with him.

And lately, tolerating his endless bad mouthing. With, if not grace, he'd seen some of her angry scowls, a stoic endurance. An endurance that, to be honest, she wouldn't offer to anyone else. Still bending her rules for him.

"So," Grace sighed, "We let things be."

Henry shifted forward, leaning his elbows on his desk. "Once you secured your pardon and were eligible for the mission, things became more complex."

Zane frowned. "Why?"

"It was immediately clear to the members of the selection committee that Jo would make a superb executive officer. Everyone is already accustomed to following her orders, she is extremely well organized, detail-oriented, and keeps her head in a crisis. And she's a damn fine practical mechanic."

"Yes. She is." Given his extremely shitty behavior lately, Zane knew he had no right whatsoever to feel at all chuffed up on Jo's behalf. He did anyway. "Why would my eligibility have changed all that?" he asked.

Grace answered. "You are an equally strong candidate for executive officer."

He deflated instantly. "Oh."

"In addition, you helped design the FTL drives and have research projects that take full advantage of the conditions on Titan to expand our knowledge in several areas," Henry said.

Zane nodded slowly. "I see." And he did. "You don't need both of us."

"No. After laying out out various scenarios it was clear. We don't. It would be an inefficient overlap on a mission team this small."

That sucked. His pardon had bumped her from consideration. His success prevented hers. And they were never going as a team. No matter how hard they worked at it. At least, not on the Astreaus.

"What would have happened if she hadn't withdrawn on her own?" he asked.

"We would have spoken with the two of you together. Laid out the difficulty as we saw it. Which was compounded by the intimate relationship you were so obviously involved in, but had not taken any steps to register officially."

Zane started to object, "But Fargo and Holly…"

Grace cut him off. "Registered their intuition to begin an intimate alliance two weeks after the escaped Titan atmosphere incident."

"Oh."

"Yes."

"And if we had?"

"If you had early enough, perhaps. It certainly would have altered our calculations. Offered us the chance to address the complexities openly with you. But not only did you not, it didn't seem as though you were even considering it very seriously."

"We never discussed it," Zane admitted. He'd thought about it. He'd just never quite been ready to commit himself. Especially after he'd been the one to tell her he was thinking of leaving town. Fishing for a request that he stay. Or, hell, a protest that he was leaving.

He wasn't completely clueless. He realized almost immediately that Jo didn't want him to leave Eureka, didn't want him to leave her. But it stung like a bitch that she refused to use her words to say that. Relying instead on anguished glances and a lot of, admittedly, incredibly hot sex to speak for her.

It wasn't enough. Speaking glances or multiple orgasms. He could feel her slipping away from him anyway. It's why her withdrawing her name from consideration for the Astreaus cut so deep. It felt like she was withdrawing herself from further consideration by him at the same time.

"I'm not surprised." Grace's expression was full of sympathy.

"And perhaps, given the DOD's new tendency to actually deny such applications, just as well," Henry added.

"Yeah." Zane shrugged. He'd thought of this too. No fucking way Warren Hughes would have signed off on his relationship with Jo. It made his cowardice easier to bear. "It is what it is."

"Well. No," said Henry, straightening up to look directly at him. "People have started flinching when they realize the two of you are in the same room. Waiting for the next inevitable, uncomfortable moment. And it's starting to make some wonder if they really want to be locked up with you for six months."

"Oh come on! No one is going to withdraw over that!" Zane said.

"Would you want to be exiled with you right now?" Henry retorted.

Zane briefly pondered just how much he would hate it if another member of the crew had spent the last month demonstrating how much of an asshole they could be. Especially one with an extensive documented history of past assholishness.

"Fine," he muttered, looking down and hoping his neck didn't look as flushed as it felt. "I will stop with the comments and the attitude."

"Zane?" Grace made his name a question.

"Yes?"

"Try to do more. If nothing else, today's events remind us that we are stepping into the unknown. It's not beyond possibility that some or all of us may not make it back. Don't leave for this mission angry. Or hurting. Don't leave Jo like that, either."

"That's asking a lot!" he snapped.

She held up her hands in calming gesture. "I'm not asking. I'm just offering you some advice. Finding someone you love is a precious gift. Don't squander it over a misunderstanding."

"I didn't misunderstand anything!"

"Are you sure?"

Zane opened his mouth to protest, then looked again at Henry and Grace. Their expressions were the same. Kind. Sympathetic. Disappointed. He let go the breath he was holding. "No."

"Good." Henry nodded solemnly. Sealing some sort of deal. "And, Zane? This conversation is entirely confidential. For reasons that I'm sure you will understand in time."

"Fine." Zane shook himself out, feeling like he'd been in this cramped space for hours instead of barely ten minutes. "Am I free to go?"

"Yes." Grace suddenly broke into an irrepressible grin. "You are dismissed, Mr. Donovan."

He barely stopped himself from clicking his heels, or trying for a terrible salute. He briefly inclined his head instead, smiling back despite the day's various disasters. Her delight with her well-deserved elevation to Captain was infectious. "Yes ma'am."


End file.
